Music

This book takes readers across the polycentric world of the pre-colonial period in AfroAsia, which involved systems, processes and interactions that were interconnected through long-distance trade, slavery and migration. It was also punctuated by the movement of symbolic forms like music that were in deep interaction with local and regional contexts. Music and musicality are primary entry points into uncovering the connections. The book weaves the story through a description of the travels of a fictional character, Garai, who traverses the AfroAsian world in different periods, from Mapungubwe in southern Africa to northern Africa, southern Spain and India, and back to southern Africa. The historical and theoretical consequences of the research, and the methodological difficulties and breakthroughs it entails, are discussed. Different categories of music and associated communities of performers, which suggest historical connections around some of the routes of the Silk Road, Indian Ocean trade and other smaller routes, are identified and described.

This book is a collection of papers presented at a colloquium on ‘AfroAsian Musical Imaginaries’ that was organized by the IIC-IRD (India International Centre-International Research Division) in collaboration with a multi-institutional project titled ‘Recentring AfroAsia: Musical and Human Migrations, 700–1500 AD’, that involved the University of the Western Cape, the University of the Witwatersrand, the University of Kwazulu-Natal, the University of Cape Town, the University of Dar es Salaam, the University of Addis Ababa and the Ambedkar University Delhi between 2016 and 2021. As part of an attempt to create a new scholarship that brings the two continents together, work by scholars from the project uncovering musical connections was brought into conversation with the work of other scholars and practitioners of music on similar themes. Based on an understanding that music can be an important lens through which cultural links between parts of the world that have long historical connections can be uncovered, even when these connections have not been adequately identified or acknowledged, the most important question posed by the papers in the book is how this can be done. The book also points towards how such scholarship and performative interactions can prise open several orthodoxies in the understanding of musical systems.

Published in association with India International Centre, New Delhi

Jalsa takes the reader through the journeys of women performers in India from the salon to the studio. It attempts to give insight into and a perspective on the beginning of the interface of technology and entertainment, and the irreversible impact this has had on how we listen to, enjoy, and consume music. It acknowledges an important slice of the history of Indian music, which is celebrated the world over today in its many forms and avatars.